


and it hasn't rained in months

by metafictionally



Category: Block B
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3113975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metafictionally/pseuds/metafictionally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm not normally the type who'd say, like, you should know what you did," Nicole says. "But you should really know what you did."</p>
<p>Jiho winces. "That's the thing," he says. "I'm pretty sure I do."</p>
            </blockquote>





	and it hasn't rained in months

**Author's Note:**

> for the jaeco cheerleader squad, kris and britt♡

Hell freezes over the week before midterm exams, and Jiho's pretty sure he knows why, although he doesn't want to say it out loud for fear that he'll be right. It's not a slow thing—it happens all at once, or at least it seems like it does. He texts Jaehyo at lunchtime, _want to check out that new mexican place down the block?_ and texts him again midafternoon, _this sculpture final is gonna kill me ;x_ , and text him again in the evening, three separate texts of emoticons dying slow and painful deaths. Jaehyo doesn't reply to any of them. That's how Jiho knows something's wrong.

They'd joked once that the longest it had taken either of them to reply to a text was two and a half minutes, and that was because Jiho had forgotten his phone when he went to the bathroom. It never takes longer than a minute, unless they're in class or asleep, so three unanswered texts in a row can mean only two things: Jaehyo's dead, or he's giving Jiho the silent treatment.

Jiho's pretty sure Jaehyo's not dead.

So silent treatment is only other option, and Jiho has a sinking feeling in his gut that he knows exactly why.

But let's start at the beginning.

 

It starts at the beginning of the year, when Jiho gets knocked on his ass with a head cold in the third week of classes and misses four solid days in a row, burrowing under his blankets and blowing his brains into tissues. 

The next week he's back in class, but it's already apparent that he'll need to scramble to catch up. Third year is important, and Jiho—raised by a single mother to believe that playing hard can only come after working hard—isn't willing to start the semester already half a lap behind. So when his sociology course lets out, he takes a deep breath and jogs after Jaehyo, who sits two rows up and one seat to the left, the one who chews the ends of his pencils and has a tattoo on the outside of his wrist that Jiho has never quite been able to make out. 

"Hey," he says, coming up beside Jaehyo and slowing to a walk. "Can I ask you a favor?"

Jaehyo blinks, then nods, bemused. "Sure, but I can't promise I can grant it," he says, smiling just a little. He's so pretty, Jiho is enamored.

"Can you bring me up to speed about assignments from last week's class?" Jiho all but begs, pressing his hands together in front of him in a gesture of supplication. "I spent the whole week learning about how much snot the human body can produce—I mean, that's probably way too much information—" _Christ, Jiho, get yourself together._

But Jaehyo is laughing, although he looks even more bemused now than he had thirty seconds ago. "Yeah, sure," he says, "just spare me the gory details about your bodily fluids, okay? I'll give you copies of my notes tomorrow, if you have time."

"For notes, I'll make time," Jiho promises. "I really appreciate it, man. I'll—" He inhales, hesitates just a second too long. "Let me buy you coffee sometime. As thanks." 

Jaehyo pauses, looks at Jiho. Hesitates just a second too long. "Yeah," he says. "That sounds good."

 

Or maybe it starts even the year before that, when Jiho lets Junyoung drag him (ha, ha) to the drag show that the university's GSA puts on every year. This time around it's sponsored in part by the Korean student association. Jiho, who fits neatly into both groups, feels at least a little bit of obligation to go, but it still takes some cajoling from Junyoung before he packs his camera into his bookbag and heads for the theater where the event is being held.

He takes photos of the performers, although never of their faces—just their hands, their shoulders, the motion of their bodies as they go through their performances. Maybe he'll use them later. Maybe he won't. 

"Who's that?" Jiho asks, nudging Junyoung in the side and lowkey pointing towards a tall, gorgeous guy standing at the edge of the room, gaze alternating between his phone's screen and the stage. Jiho hasn't seen him before, but then again, there are a lot of people on this campus who Jiho hasn't seen before—that doesn't mean anything.

"Jaehyo Ahn," Junyoung says, then slips back into Korean to correct himself. "Ahn Jaehyo. He's a third year. The GSA keeps trying to get him to be their president, or at least co-president, but he's pretty stubborn about doing event planning and nothing else. I don't even think he goes to meetings, usually."

Jiho watches as Jaehyo slips his phone into his pocket and his arm around the shoulders of a petite Latina girl who's approached him from the side. Junyoung slides his gaze over toward Jiho. "Not his girlfriend," he says. "You look interested."

"I don't even know the guy," Jiho says, switching back to English so it'll be harder to tell that he's lying. "What interest would I have?"

Junyoung gives him a long, searching look, but in the end he says nothing.

 

Jiho runs into Taeil in the grass outside the library. He's on his back with his eyes closed, sunglasses on, looking for all the world like he's sleeping but probably secretly planning world domination. "Hyung," Jiho says, nudging Taeil in the hip with the toe of his sneaker. "Did Jaehyo hyung lose his phone?"

Taeil lazily elbows Jiho in the big toe. It hurts more than Jiho lets on. "No," he says. "Unless you mean between now and five minutes ago when he texted me last." He brings a hand up to shield his face, looking up at Jiho, although Jiho can't see his eyes. "Why? He's not texting you?"

"No," Jiho says, thinking fast. "Just saw a phone in the library that looked like his and thought I'd ask since I saw you."

It's a weak excuse, and they both know it. But Taeil, perhaps because of his allergy to getting involved in other people's bullshit, doesn't call him out on it. "Okay," Taeil says, dropping his arm back to where it was resting on his stomach. "Don't forget about Nicole's birthday this weekend."

Jiho had totally forgotten. "Of course I won't forget," he says. "Enjoy your nap."

Taeil waves him off. Jiho walks back to the dorm with a frown on his face and his mind in overdrive. 

 

Jiho comes out to Jaehyo on accident, one day, when they're at a sushi boat joint taking advantage of their happy hour, all plates $1.50 deal.

"I haven't actually eaten sushi in a century," Jiho says, grabbing a plate of fatty tuna from the conveyor belt. "This guy I dated a while ago, he had this Thing about sushi, he hated eating fish that he didn't know where they came from? And he got really passive aggressive about it every time I ate sushi so I just ended up avoiding it most of the time—"

He looks up and Jaehyo has that expression, the kind where Jiho knows he said something important but Jaehyo's trying to pretend it wasn't important. He mentally catalogues his words. "Oh," he says. "Well. There's that, I guess."

Jaehyo laughs, a little high pitched but relieved. "Yeah," he says, "there's that. I guess we have similar taste in ex-boyfriends." His voice shapes _ex_ like a question mark, so Jiho nods, laying the question to rest.

Later, Jaehyo drives Jiho home, and before Jiho gets out of the car he turns to Jaehyo sand says, "Sorry for dropping that on you, earlier. The whole—liking guys thing. I mean, not that I thought you'd mind, but usually I try to lead up to it a little better." 

It was just that he'd been so wrapped up in thinking about Jaehyo that he'd forgotten to think about what he was saying. 

Jaehyo shakes his head like it doesn't matter. "It's fine," he says. "Something else we have in common."

He looks at Jiho for a long moment. Jaehyo's eyes are like he wants to say more, and for a split second Jiho thinks he will—either he'll say something or do something. What, Jiho can only hope. But instead he just smiles. "I'll see you in soc tomorrow," Jaehyo says. "Don't forget your thumbdrive for the powerpoint."

Jiho had totally forgotten. "I won't forget," he promises, letting himself out of the car. 

 

Nicole is no help, either. Jiho picks her up to drive her to the restaurant, and she tells him that Jaehyo said he wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be able to make it. "But you and I both know that's bullshit, don't we?" she says, slanting a look over at Jiho as she reaches to turn down the radio volume. "He's not sick, is he, Jiho?"

"Probably not," Jiho admits. He keeps his eyes on the road. The freeway at this hour is clogged with traffic, and they crawl along, brake lights glowing for miles ahead. Jiho's glad they left early. "He's mad at me."

"Do you know why?"

"If I knew why, he wouldn't still be mad," Jiho says. He braces his elbow against the window and press the heel of his hand against his temple, as if he can fight back the headache that's growing there. "I'm in the dark here. He won't even text me back."

Nicole breathes out heavily—just a little too quietly to be called a sigh—and shrugs, her manicured fingernails drumming an absent rhythm on the handle of the passenger door. "I'm not normally the type who'd say, like, you should know what you did," she says. "But you should really know what you did."

Jiho winces. "That's the thing," he says. "I'm pretty sure I do."

 

The best grade of Jiho's second year of university is in sociology, which he thinks is at least ninety-seven percent thanks to Jaehyo's incredible project planning skills. To celebrate, he and Jaehyo buy a bottle of cheap wine and walk down to the beach, which is a little further than they thought it was, but still worth the trip when they reach the sand and see that there's barely anyone in sight. "Eleven thirty on a Tuesday night, you'd think there would be more people out," Jiho jokes, uncorking the bottle and passing it to Jaehyo for the first drink. "I guess by now everybody else's gone for summer."

"Probably," Jaehyo agrees, before knocking back a long pull of the wine. The look on his face when he lowers the bottle lets Jiho know that it tastes like shit, but they'd spent like $5 on it, so he can't say he's really that surprised. And Jaehyo takes another drink anyway before he passes it back to Jiho, so it can't be that bad. "Did all your shit get taken away for storage?"

"Everything except what I'm bringing back in my car," Jiho says. He takes a drink of wine. It does taste like shit. "This is nasty," he says, and takes another drink. "Don't let me buy wine again."

"Sure," Jaehyo agrees. He laughs. Not for the first time, Jiho thinks he's beautiful.

The wine is awful, but it's enough that they're both tipsy by the time it's gone. They leave the empty bottle with their sweatshirts and take their shoes off, roll up their pants and wade out into the low tide surf, which laps at their ankles, a little too chilly for June. Jiho cups his hands around his mouth and hollers out at the ocean, "TWO DOWN, TWO TO GO."

He's still laughing at himself when Jaehyo kisses him. 

For a first kiss, it's pretty bad. They're both drunk and Jiho isn't expecting it, so their noses collide and Jiho loses his balance, has to grab Jaehyo's shoulder to steady himself. In the darkness, Jiho can't see color, but Jaehyo's skin feels very warm where Jiho's fingers are resting against his neck, and Jiho can imagine him blushing all the way down his throat.

The second kiss, though.

The second kiss is good. Jaehyo's hands settle into the small of Jiho's back, the sway of his spine, and Jiho's other hand finds its way to thread through Jaehyo's hair. He licks into Jaehyo's mouth, and Jaehyo tastes sharp, like tannins, like cheap wine, and Jiho loves it, he presses closer and sucks on Jaehyo's lower lip, his tongue, traces the ridges on the roof of his mouth, swallows down the sound that Jaehyo makes in response. It's good. Jiho wants to keep kissing for a long time.

When they pull apart, they're both soaked to mid-thigh by waves they hadn't noticed rolling in. Jiho touches the wet denim of Jaehyo's pants and says, "We should go in."

Jaehyo clears his throat, his eyes bright in the darkness. "That sounds like a good idea."

 

In July, Jaehyo drives up to spend the weekend with Jiho while his mom is out of town on a business trip. "We have a dog," Jiho says, "and a lot of cereal, and kimchi, and did I mention my mom is going to be gone until Sunday night?" 

Jaehyo's never texted back faster.

When Jaehyo arrives, he parks in the driveway and brings his things inside, leaves his shoes and his bag at the doorway. "I'll give you the tour," Jiho says, even though the tension between them is so thick it's palpable, and Jaehyo's eyes drill holes in his back through the entire walkthrough. Jiho points out the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen area. Jiseok's room, although he's not home often enough anymore to count, and his parents' room.

Last is Jiho's room. As he closes the door behind Jaehyo, he's never been more conscious of how messy it is. "Sorry it's cluttered," he says, picking up a notebook from the floor and depositing it on the bookshelf. "I keep meaning to clean—"

"Honestly, shut up," Jaehyo says, and closes Jiho's mouth with his own. 

They have sex on Jiho's unmade bed, sheets tangled around their ankles, hands and thighs covered in lube. It's not graceful, but sex isn't supposed to be. It's supposed to be intimate and carnal and a little bit embarrassing, and it is all of those things, but it's also breathtakingly good, so good that even just the way Jaehyo keens when Jiho presses three fingers inside him is enough to make Jiho almost lose it too early. "Fuck, don't make that sound," Jiho gasps, his mouth pressed against the inside of Jaehyo's knee, just south of a bruise he'd sucked on Jaehyo's thigh minutes earlier. "Don't make that sound until I'm fucking you."

Jaehyo makes a breathless sound that was maybe once a chuckle and says, "So get on with fucking me."

Jiho does. He pushes inside and the noise Jaehyo makes can't be human, it's like a base animal instinct made into sound, raw and a little pained. Jiho moves slow, rocking in shallow thrusts, a little deeper with each one until the furrow eases out from between Jaehyo's brows and his panting stops sounding like _it hurts_. "You okay?" he asks, his hands finding Jaehyo's hips, his waist, his hips again. "Does it hurt?"

"Of course it does," Jaehyo says, "your dick's bigger than your fingers. Gimme a second." His palm presses flat to Jiho's lower stomach, fingers slipping in the film of sweat that's already starting to cover Jiho's body—the exertion of staying still, of giving Jaehyo the time he needs to adjust. It feels like Jiho's sanity is unraveling.

After a century, several millenia, Jaehyo says, "Move."

So Jiho moves, and Jaehyo moans, and it's all indulgent and filthy and indecent, the moaning, the sound of skin against skin and the stuttering groans that Jaehyo keeps drawing out of Jiho every time he lifts his hips to meet Jiho's thrusts. It's messy, it's intoxicating, and Jiho can't stop his gaze traveling over every inch of Jaehyo's body, memorizing the lines of him. He's gorgeous, and Jiho might be in big, big trouble.

 

They kiss for the first time in June, fuck for the first time in July. By the end of August, Jiho has gotten Jaehyo off over Skype and FaceTime more times than he can count, and when they get back to school the first thing they do is make out in three different places in Jaehyo's apartment, which he's renting for his senior year and, he hopes, beyond. 

It's good, it's really good. Except for the parts that aren't.

Like the part where they haven't really talked about what it means, that they sneak kisses in between classes and have had sex on every conceivable flat surface in either of their living arrangements. That they spend just as much time cuddling and talking as they do fucking, come to think of it, and that Jaehyo knows some of Jiho's deepest secrets, things he hasn't ever told to anyone. Things like how he was born with a heart defect and so his favorite book is Brian Doyle's _The Wet Engine_ , like how he worries sometimes that he'll forget his Korean the more English he speaks. Like how he wants his senior studio arts project to explore the intersection between his Korean identity and his queer identity, which is something he's literally never talked about with anyone, not even Junyoung, not even Nicole, not even Yukwon. 

So that's the problem. Jiho wants to talk about it, but he can't find the words, and Jaehyo seems content to let that part stay in silence.

They've been sleeping together consistently for four months by the time Jiho kisses the girl with the long blonde hair at that party he goes to to play wingman to Junyoung. In his defense, he's more than a little drunk, but that's not much of a defense at all when he knows Jaehyo is at the party too. 

It shouldn't surprise him, that Jaehyo is pissed off. Isn't that what Jiho wanted? To make sure Jaehyo cared enough to be pissed off at all?

Jiho's an idiot.

"I'm an idiot," he tells Yukwon, who listens patiently and silently, but with a raised eyebrow, as Jiho spills out all of the events of the last year or so, from stopping Jaehyo after their sociology class to the party last weekend, and the girl whose name Jiho can't even remember anymore. Amy, maybe. Anna. Something. 

When Jiho is done, Yukwon sighs and says, "Yeah, you're an idiot."

"Thank you," Jiho says, wrinkling his nose.

"You said it first, not me." Yukwon pats his knee, affectionate. "So go apologize to him. I don't know why you didn't do that when you first figured out he was pissed."

From Yukwon, who has been dating the same girl since his senior year of high school, this seems like sage advice, although a part of Jiho wonders why he didn't arrive at that conclusion on his own. "Apologizing is scary," he says, "I would rather put my head in the sand, like an ostrich."

"First of all," Yukwon says, "ostriches don't actually put their heads in the sand."

"Why do you know that?"

"Second of all, the thing is, you fucked up, and you owe him an apology at least," Yukwon continues, like he hadn't even heard Jiho's question. "If you're lucky, he'll understand, you'll work it out and you guys will keep on keeping on with none of the angst. If you're not lucky, he's done with you, but at least you apologized."

It seems like less sage advice when Jiho actually has to do it. 

"I will genuinely kick your ass," Yukwon says, as if sensing the hesitation in the air. "Use your words, say you're sorry." 

Jiho sticks his tongue out at Yukwon and stands up from the table they've been sharing in the library. "Fine," he says, "but when I come back to you nursing my bruised and battered ego—"

"You can say you told me so." Yukwon waves him off. "Go, go."

 

Jaehyo lives off campus, but with midterms just over the horizon, Jiho's pretty sure he knows where to find him. Blessedly, since Jiho's pretty sure he wouldn't be welcome at Jaehyo's house right now and he's not sure he wants to try his hand at finding the way there, anyway, not with how similar streets in the neighborhood can look. So instead he heads to the place that Jaehyo is most likely to be: The campus darkroom, developing photos for his mid-term series on unexpected intimacies. Jaehyo had told him all about it two weekends before, when he'd photographed the way Jiho's hand spread over Jaehyo's lower belly when they spooned.

Jaehyo's name is on the room reservation sign-up sheet, listed next to 102. It's a feeling that's half terror, half relief, and Jiho leans up against the wall next to the door and settles in for the long haul. At least he knows better than to let himself in.

It's almost nine in the evening by the time Jaehyo emerges from the darkroom.

"Jaehyo," Jiho says, scaring the everloving shit out of Jaehyo, who chokes on a gasp and nearly drops all of the things that he was carrying in his hands, including his camera, which he barely saves with quick reflexes and some creative maneuvering.

"Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Jiho," Jaehyo snaps, "you can't give me a heart attack before I graduate, you asshole."

His words have a little more bite to them than Jiho is used to, and it stings, knowing that he's the root. This is terrible, and no matter how much Yukwon insists that ostriches don't stick their heads in the sand, Jiho would nonetheless very much like to.

But he thinks of his mom telling him, in Korean, _you haven't measure to know whether it's long or short._ The outcome of a thing cannot be decided without taking action. Jiho takes a deep breath.

"I fucked up," he says. "At that party."

Jaehyo nods, silently.

"I was really drunk," Jiho continues, "which isn't an excuse, it's just a reason. I was thinking, fuck, you know? I don't know what we are. I didn't know. We didn't ever talk about it, what we mean to each other—meant to each other. I didn't know how to bring it up, like, hey, I kind of want you to be my boyfriend? And you didn't bring it up either so I figured—okay, he's fine with this, with not knowing. Or—with not being anything."

He's rambling, but Jaehyo hasn't cut him off yet, and hasn't walked away, so Jiho figures he's still in the clear. 

"So I kissed the girl to prove something, I guess," Jiho says. "To you. Or to myself. If you got pissed off then it meant that you—maybe wanted the same thing as me, except I didn't think it all the way through to the part where if you actually got pissed off, I would have to fix that. Maybe I didn't think you would."

"You're an idiot," Jaehyo says. Something about him seems like it's softening, a curious fondness in his eyes as he looks at Jiho. Bright in ways Jiho has seen a few times before. "Why wouldn't I be mad? Watching the guy I'm head over heels for, kissing some girl at a party? How would you feel if it was me?"

"I'd be murderous," Jiho admits, "probably. God, I am an idiot."

"Yes," Jaehyo agrees with a solemn nod. "So put the idiocy to rest, okay? Take me or leave me, but let's not play anymore."

"I want to kiss you, but I also don't want you to drop your camera again," Jiho says. 

Jaehyo laughs. "Answer enough for me," he says. "I'll find a shelf."

"Yeah," Jiho says, laughing as well, his relief coloring the sound pink. "You do that."


End file.
